Stepping Off The Accelerator
by Bolt of Tien Mu
Summary: A side story in part of the HeartsFury universe. With the world coming to an end, Keiko and Shizuru find a little comfort, which they remember fondly once things settle down. Shoujo ai and yuri, with the tiniest splash of citrus. Rated for safety.


Author's Notes: It's a first! Move over, boys, it's time for some shoujo ai! Freki, I haven't written shoujo ai in AGES. And never for YYH. This technically falls into the Hearts/Fury arc, but neither one requires the other. This establishes the relationship between Keiko and Shizuru, which comes into being well before the boys get together. And for once, my story has a timeline: episode 88, unedited American volume 25. There's a lot of material in here that's quoted directly from the show. Well, a sizable chunk. Part of the inspiration is Shizuru's ambiguously suggestive comment and part is from the fact that they skip quite a bit of time when they're covering what the girls are up to. Moreover, by way of firsts, I decided to do this in first person, Keiko's POV. It wasn't planned, but these things happen sometimes. And I apologize now for the excess of metaphors in parts. The point was that Keiko is very out of it and her thinking is skewed. I don't love metaphors that much, I promise. As usual, YYH belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi/Shueisha, Studio Pierrot, and so on.

Warnings: Shoujo ai, yuri lime. Well... strawberry. Strawberry lemonade? Snorkle.

Stepping Off The Accelerator  
A Yu Yu Hakusho Yuri Fic by Kitsuneko

Shizuru lay at my side, one arm cradling my head while the other cradled my breast over my bra, her legs twined with mine. Our shirts were abandoned at the end of the bed, slowly slipping off the edge when they were nudged by an unheeding foot. My eyes were closed, so it came as a surprise when her weight shifted and I found her hovering over me, stealing a kiss while her free hand tugged at the button of my pants. The guilt seemed all my own when I gently pushed her back and she willingly removed her hand.

"This is a little too fast for me," I whispered apologetically, mournfully.

"That's all you ever need to say." She settled back next to me, folding me up in her arms and hiding me away in her larger form. It was all I needed to say.

"You've told me that since the first time."

_I will never take more than you are willing to give. I'll only ask._

"It's the truth. It's you I'm wanting, not just your skin."

"You must be the kindest lover anywhere."

"I'm just not a man." Silence, lazy and elastic, spread out in the room that was at once too warm and too cool. The warmth made me sleepy, sliding away from this precious time; the cold made me cuddly, sliding into her heat.

"Do you remember the first time?" Looking up, I saw that Shizuru wasn't going to answer, only close her eyes and recall. That sounded like a nice idea.

* * *

"Kid. Hey, Keiko, it's gonna be okay." I wondered when Shizuru had gone underwater, because her voice was hollow and far away.

"Keiko, come on, you can't have another break down." That's right. They told me I had a nervous break down at the tournament. But this was the same thing, all over again, so I felt justified.

"This has got to be the least effective, or convenient, way of dealing with stress. Come on, girl, snap out of it." For a time, it was quiet and part of me wondered if they had killed Shizuru. That part was very hard and heavy, a weight somewhere between my heart and the pit of my stomach. In comparison, my head felt like a balloon.

Something came along and popped it.

"Yusuke, you-" I woke up half way into my retaliating slap.

"Nope. Just Shizuru to your rescue this time. Not much of a hero, right? I mean, heroes aren't supposed to slap girls." I wasn't listening. I was too busy launching myself into her arms, leaving us huddled on the floor.

"I'm scared, Shizuru! We just keep losing them. I close my eyes and I just see them all dying, again and again, every night and day."

"Shh, shh, it's okay. We haven't lost anybody. Our boys just come back from the dead, every time. Genkai too. There's nothing to be afraid of. This team's got death beat, okay?" I cried harder. She was strong, unwavering. My fear was selfish. My fear was unfounded. My fear was wrong. I told myself that. And it wasn't working. I curled my head under her chin, pushing myself closer.

"We aren't hurt. We need to go out and see what's happening to the city while they try to save it." She was lying. Under the long sleeves of her dress, she was bleeding into bandages, her arm bruising and swelling.

"You lie. To take the pain away."

"Yeah, well, I do what I can." She sounded almost embarrassed.

"How much would you do to take the pain away?" I hiccupped through my dying sobs, rubbing my cheek against her collarbone. A hand tilted my face up and in blurry, burning eyes, I saw the faint glow of a once sparking, popping sun.

"I would..." She looked away for a moment. It was hesitation, something like shame. It was scaring me more, but something in that sun burned brighter when she looked back at me.

"I would make the whole world drop dead." Then I burned to red and white as the sun kissed me into dawn. But dawn became noon too quickly and I was afraid of sunset and the dark that waited.

"Shizuru... ahn... Too fast." And for me, the sun stopped in its path.

"That's fine, Keiko. Just stay with me for a bit more." Being held by her, my fear faded out; breathing in time with her, my mind came back to itself.

I woke up completely some time while we were walking downtown, where people were still calm. But the ground moved beneath them and a collective spasm of fright moved through the city. Shizuru must have sensed something, because she was pushing me out of the way before I heard the sign over our heads break loose of its holds. Behind the darkness of my closed eyes, there was only the welcome warmth of Shizuru's body against mine and the deafening explosion of the sign meeting the sidewalk. In this moment of black, frozen terror, when I opened my eyes and saw the sign lying beside us like shattered bits of sky, I wanted nothing more than to be home, held by her and letting the world come to ruin outside.

"So, should we take that as a sign from above?" Her cheeky voice, in a moment like this, reminded me of one of the reasons why I needed the world to go on.

"A sign? Of what?"

"Oh, like we aren't meant to ever leave the apartment again?" We were getting up, out of the way of panicked pedestrians. "Or that they still haven't beaten Sensui." Then the blast of blue energy came up, lighting the night sky. It wasn't his though. It didn't have his white hot temper behind it.

"You think that has something to do with the boys?" It was a silly question. We started running at the same time.

"You get some kind of reading off this?" After all, a hole that size had to have something noteworthy about it for a psychic to pick up on.

"Yeah, a big energy tug of war going on somewhere. I only hope we're on the right side of that rope." Whatever she felt was lost on me and I would have been content to stay there until another cataclysm told us where to go next.

"We have to go. NOW." She grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the site of the explosion. Though it was more out of necessity than affection, it felt right to have her holding my hand.

"But where are we going?"

"Somewhere far away. I've got a bad feeling. Something bad is gonna happen and it's gonna happen here." So it came down to this. His end fight was underway.

"Please, be careful Yusuke." It was hard enough to mourn your death the first time.

On a rooftop across town, Shizuru leaned against the fence, watching the city with drooping eyes. I could almost imagine her a few years younger, in high school, as a Yankee girl with a leather jacket and face mask. I wonder if school was hard for her, like it is for Yusuke. Did she fight against the world and spit in its face, because it had kicked her when she was down?

"What's wrong, Shizuru?"

"My brother's heart. I can sense it breaking." I only whimpered a little in response. How can you comfort a person when they tell you something like that? How can you not, when you know that their heart is breaking too?

"I have to admit it, Keiko, I'm really scared." So she had lied again. Could I take away the pain for her now?

"Is it wrong to be?" Maybe not, when the world is going too fast, a car without breaks, a candle being snuffed.

* * *

"That was a long night, wasn't it?" She breathed her question against my hair and I nodded. "Worth it?"

"We're here now, aren't we?" I pulled away and stood at the side of the bed, reclaiming my shirt.

"Yep. And I get to understand your boy's old bad behavior now," Shizuru commented, reaching around to fondle me, the same way Yusuke once did.

"Would you like to get hit like him, too?" I asked, almost sounding annoyed, and batted her hands away to pull my shirt on over my head.

"It's late. Wouldn't you rather fall asleep with me?" I looked back and had to smile at her vaguely innocent, inviting expression.

"I always like watching the sun set."

"Huh? It's," she glanced over at the bedside clock, "after ten. Sun set long ago. But, if you'd like, maybe we can go to the beach tomorrow and watch it. We could take a picnic dinner."

"That sounds nice. Now, sleep, my love."

"Only with you." And the world slowed so we could sleep without fear.


End file.
